Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 14 blockchain investment and financing events around the world last week (June 6-December 12), with a total funding of over US$167 million, a significant increase compared to the previous week. An overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced three investment and financing events, among which Berachain ecosystem liquidity aggregator Ooga Booga announced the completion of a $1.5 million strategic round of financing;
- Web3 Games track announced one investment and financing event. ZKcandy, a Layer 2 blockchain for games driven by ZKsync, successfully completed a $4 million private placement financing;
- Four investment and financing events were announced in the AI+Web3 field, among which AI payment infrastructure Nevermined announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Generative Ventures;
- The DePIN track announced two investment and financing events. The decentralized GPU network Inferix announced that it received $2.6 million in investment from DePIN X Capital;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced two investment and financing events. Movement Labs is close to completing a $100 million Series B financing round with an estimated valuation of $3 billion.
- One investment and financing event was announced in the Others category, among which the AI-driven encrypted data platform SoSoValue announced the completion of a US$15 million Series A financing, with a valuation of US$200 million;
- Centralized finance announced one investment and financing event. FTX EU, the bankrupt European branch of FTX, was acquired by Backpack Exchange for $32.7 million.
DeFi
Ooga Booga Completes $1.5 Million Strategic Round of Financing, Lead by Primal
Ooga Booga, the liquidity aggregator of Berachain ecosystem, announced the completion of a strategic round of financing of US$1.5 million, which will be used to accelerate the next stage of its development in the Berachain ecosystem. This round of financing was led by Primal, and participating institutions included CitizenX, Quantstamp, Rubik, ViaBTC Capital, TempleDAO, etc. In addition, many angel investors participated, including individual investors from Infinex, GMX, Saison Capital, Movement Labs, etc.
Ocean Protocol invests $735,000 to support Yiedl.ai in developing AI-driven DeFi
OceanDAO, co-founders Trent McConaghy and Bruce Pon, and members of the Ocean Predictor team have jointly invested $735,000 in Yiedl.ai, an AI-focused DeFi marketplace platform dedicated to driving DeFi innovation through data-intensive AI.
SUI Ecosystem Project Wave Completes Seed Round Financing, KuCoin Labs Leads Investment
SUI ecological project Wave officially announced that its seed round of financing completed in November 2024 was led by KuCoin Labs, and other investors included SUI Foundation, Web3Port Foundation and Comma3 Ventures. The amount of financing was not disclosed. The Wave team said that it currently has more than 4 million on-chain users and more than 600,000 monthly active users. Its products include Telegram-based trading tool Wave Trading, Wave Pad, an incubation platform that supports high-quality early projects in the SUI ecosystem, and DeFi and GameFi related products such as Wave Staking and Lucky Wheel, providing users with a one-stop experience in trading, airdrops, investments and games.
Web3 Games
ZKcandy, a ZKsync-powered gaming-specific Layer 2 blockchain, has successfully completed a $4 million private placement. Investors in this round include Wemix Network, Animoca Ventures, Spartan Group, Perlone Capital, Presto Labs, Flowdesk, Lecca Ventures, Efficient Frontier, and Prometheuz. ZKcandy is developed and operated by iCandy, whose subsidiary Lemon Sky Studios has participated in the development of several AAA games such as Nioh: The Rise of Ronin, The Last of Us 2: Remastered, Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3, and Final Fantasy 16. ZKcandy currently has more than 2.4 million testnet wallets and is preparing 25 games including first-tier Hollywood IPs, with plans to launch the mainnet in the first half of 2025. The project aims to promote the development of Web3 games through Layer 2 technology and build a decentralized gaming ecosystem for the future.
AI
AI payment infrastructure Nevermined completes $4 million seed round
AI payment infrastructure Nevermined announced the completion of a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Polymorphic Capital, Halo Capital and Arca. According to reports, Nevermined is building a decentralized financial infrastructure for business between artificial intelligences. The protocol it builds turns artificial intelligence interactions into permissionless economic transactions, just like PayPal turns every web page into a storefront. It aims to make every AI agent a sovereign economic participant that can set prices for its services.
Rena Labs, a verifiable AI technology company, has completed a $3.3 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Paper Ventures, with participation from multiple investment institutions including Lightspeed Faction, Eterna Capital, Lyrik Ventures, Mapleblock Capital, Selini Capital and Keyrock. Rena Labs plans to use this financing to expand its team, attract developers and industry experts, and strengthen the research and development of its abstract middleware Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This technology aims to build an infrastructure for trusted AI applications on the chain, making intelligent systems trustworthy and verifiable by default, while protecting user digital sovereignty.
AI-driven RWA L2 network Novastro completes $1.2 million seed round
AI-driven RWA Layer2 network Novastro announced the completion of a $1.2 million seed round of financing, led by Woodstock, with participation from Faculty group, Double peak group, Cogitent, X21 and Sam Tapaliya. According to reports, Novastro is an AI-driven real-world asset (RWA) Layer 2 chain that integrates MoveVM and EigenLayer AVS. The network is designed to provide Ethereum-level security while leveraging the efficient scalability of the Move language to support tokenized revenue applications in the RWA and DeFi fields. Its core framework is built around the RUSD stablecoin, which is designed for the tokenization and trading of real-world assets.
Confidential AI project Privasea completed its Series A financing with a valuation of $180 million, and has raised a total of $15 million in three rounds. Investors include GSR, Amber and Echo, and early investors include Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, Nomura's Laser Digital and Gate Labs. Privasea released the DeepSea testnet Beta on January 6. This financing will be used to accelerate the deployment of the mainnet DeepSea and the research and development of related intelligent agents, and promote the development of fields such as human-computer interaction and intelligent agent interaction.
DePIN
DePIN startup Starpower completes $2.5 million financing, led by Framework Ventures
DePIN startup Starpower announced the completion of a new round of financing of $2.5 million, bringing its total financing to $4 million. The new financing was led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Solana Ventures and Bitscale Capital. According to reports, Starpower is creating a decentralized energy network, including batteries and electric vehicles, to help meet electricity demand. Its protocol has accumulated 1.5 million registered wallets and more than 16,000 activated devices, in addition to bringing in $1 million in revenue. The company intends to use the funds to continue building its decentralized platform and increase its efforts to increase user adoption.
DePIN Network Hivera Announces $2 Million Financing
DePIN network Hivera recently announced on the X platform that it has received $2 million in funding from the IPN Foundation. According to reports, Hivera is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) supported by the Ton Incubator. It allows users to contribute data for AI training through the Telegram applet and receive token rewards based on the device bandwidth speed.
Infrastructure & Tools
Movement Labs, which focuses on Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain development, is approaching the completion of a $100 million Series B financing round, with an estimated valuation of $3 billion. This round of financing is jointly led by CoinFund and Nova Fund (Brevan Howard's digital asset division), and investors will receive shares in the company and its token Move, with an emphasis on the token form. Movement Labs previously completed a $38 million Series A financing in April 2024 , led by Polychain Capital. The completion of this round of financing is expected to be achieved at the end of January.
Movement is based on the Move programming language developed by Facebook. Different from independent public chains Aptos and Sui, it adopts Layer 2 structure and makes full use of the Ethereum ecosystem. Its mainnet beta version and Move token were launched in December 2024. Move's current market value is about US$2.25 billion, which has nearly doubled since its launch.
Sundial Completes Seed Round Led by Figment Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Other Investors
Sundial, the developer of the identity protocol Onflow, announced the completion of a strategic Pre-Seed round of financing led by Figment Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Avalanche, etc. This round of financing will continue to develop its privacy-respecting identity protocol Onflow. According to reports, Sundial aims to build applications and infrastructure for the entire stack, and launched the ZK ID solution Onflow in November last year.
other
Crypto data platform SoSoValue completes $15 million in financing to launch multi-currency index
AI-driven crypto data platform SoSoValue announced the completion of a $15 million Series A financing round, with a valuation of $200 million. This round of financing was led by Hongshan (Sequoia China), SmallSpark, Mirana Ventures and Safepal. SoSoValue said that this round of financing was completed at the end of December, and the funds were mainly used for the reserve fund of SoSoValue Indices (SSI). SSI is an innovative spot crypto index protocol that aims to promote efficient investment in the crypto market and makes SoSoValue the first institution to introduce spot indexes to the market in the form of tokens.
SoSoValue is committed to providing retail investors with real-time market data and ETF fund flow tracking. Its SoSoValue Indices Protocol packages digital assets into cross-chain cryptocurrencies through smart contracts. SoSoValue has launched four indexes at the end of December, namely: MAG7.ssi, MEME.ssi (tracking the top ten meme coins), DEFI.ssi and USSI (hedge type).
Centralized Finance
FTX EU, the bankrupt European branch of FTX, has been acquired by Backpack Exchange for $32.7 million. FTX EU previously held a MiFID II license issued by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). Armani Ferrante, CEO of Backpack Exchange, said that the company plans to become the only regulated perpetual contract provider in Europe and has submitted a MiCA notification, which is expected to go online in the first quarter of 2025. In addition, Backpack plans to launch a full range of crypto derivatives services, giving priority to the launch of regulated perpetual futures products, and promises to give priority to the return of FTX EU customer funds.
At present, many exchanges including Coinbase and Bitstamp have obtained MiFID II licenses. It is reported that the founding team of Backpack has previously participated in the construction of the Solana ecosystem and successfully launched wallet and NFT businesses, and completed US$17 million in financing last year.
